A variety of programming competitions are conducted on popular basis to identify the best talent in the field of computer programming. Participants in such competitions are usually asked to write programming codes that perform a defined task. The programming code of each participant is checked for correctness, performance and efficiency, based on which the best programmer is decided and suitably rewarded.
In some programming competitions, participants are provided with a problem statement and are asked to write a program code that solves the problem in an efficient way. An example of such programming competition is an SQL (Structured Query Language) query writing competition wherein the participants are asked to write an SQL query to extract particular data information from a database provided to them. The participants test for the functional correctness and the performance of their SQL queries against the provided database. Before submitting the SQL queries, the participants are allowed to refine or tune their SQL queries within the time period given to the competitors, such that the SQL queries submitted by the participants are functionally correct and perform better against the provided database. Later, the submitted SQL queries are evaluated by reviewers, who may be part of competition organizing committee. The reviewers evaluate the submitted SQL queries and adjudicate the best performing SQL query as the winning query.